


Not to Say the Things We Mean

by J (j_writes)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 06:25:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/427933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It took me four years to trust Phil Coulson to have my back," Clint told the bot.  To its credit, it just gave him Coulson's mildest smile and said, "I know how to wait."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not to Say the Things We Mean

**Author's Note:**

> blame Aliassmith for encouragement, and Clark Gregg for looking like [this](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m52orq7rk91qkwsw1o1_500.jpg).

_"It took me four years to trust Phil Coulson to have my back," Clint told the bot._

_To its credit, it just gave him Coulson's mildest smile and said, "I know how to wait."_  
______________

Clint sat at the edge of his bed staring at the screen for what felt like half a lifetime before he fumbled for his phone. He hesitated over Natasha's number for a moment before dialing Tony instead.

"I think Jarvis has developed a conscience," he said. 

Tony yawned down the phone line. "No, _I_ developed him," he replied. "To be mine."

"Get down here." He hung up, dropping the phone to the bed and letting his head fall into his hands. He raked his fingers through his hair and tried not to listen to the faint noises coming from the TV.

"This better be good, Barton," Tony's voice called from the hallway. "And no, before you ask, I'm not getting involved in a threesome with you and – " he pushed the door open and stopped dead in his tracks. "Well," he remarked. "Shit."

"Shit," Clint agreed dully without raising his head.  
______________

Agent Coulson returned to active duty ten months and twenty-six days after he had been declared dead. Clint was sure there were probably about sixty-two forms for that, and that Coulson could tell him what each one of them was, but Coulson didn't exist anymore. In his place was a version of the man that Clint had only seen in the photo that used to sit in the corner of his desk – dressed in fatigues, two decades of lines erased from his face, Nick Fury's arm slung across his shoulders, a laugh just beginning to pull at the corner of his mouth.

That photo was in a storage closet at the back of Clint's floor in the mansion now, along with the rest of Phil Coulson's personal effects, a fact which he had no intention of sharing with the bot that wore his face.

His eyes had fallen on Clint first when Fury led him into the room, caught and held, and his face had melted into an expression Clint had seen only a handful of times before, and never like that – never in a room full of people, each more desperate for answers than the last. It made him feel like things were tearing inside him, like he would do anything in the world to catch that moment, that expression, and hold onto it, but then the bot's face – so impossibly young that it made Clint's heart hurt – was schooling itself back into clean lines, and he was nodding at Clint, looking away, towards the others.

There was only a moment, afterwards when Natasha was grilling Fury on the specifics of the transfer of Coulson's memory and consciousness to the new body, when the bot slid across the room towards Clint and said in a voice that was so close to right, "Last I knew, you were still – " he hesitated. "Compromised. Fury explained how things ended, but it's…" he met Clint's eyes quickly, fleetingly. "I'm glad everyone got through intact."

"Everyone didn't," Clint said coldly, and walked out.  
______________

The first time he heard Coulson's voice on the comms again, he dropped his bow.

He tried to make it look intentional, but the way those familiar eyes hovered over him at the debriefing afterwards indicated that the maneuver hadn't been entirely successful.  
______________

Clint put in for a transfer a month and a half after the bot appeared, and when he didn't hear anything after a week, he went to Fury.

"Paperwork must have got lost," Fury said with a shrug. "Can't do anything without the proper paperwork around here." 

Clint considered filing it again, but decided it would probably be futile. He considered handing in a resignation instead, but Steve found him at the kitchen table with the file open on his computer, and that was pretty much the end of that. He fell asleep that night curled up with Natasha, full of some of Tony's finest booze, and when he woke in the morning, he found Bruce in the kitchen, making hangover-banishing concoctions and bacon. His team was anything but subtle, but he had to admit – nearly a year down the line – they were definitely his team.  
______________

"You spend a lot of time in here," Clint said, leaning against the door of the gym, and the bot didn't appear surprised as he dropped his fists and turned from the bag to look at him.

"Ten months of solitary will do that to a guy." There was a flicker of something faintly miserable across his face for a moment, but it disappeared quickly. "Want to – " he gestured towards the boxing ring.

Clint took the opportunity to look him over, sizing him up as an opponent. He hadn't spent much time looking at the new Coulson (the old Coulson, the Coulson he'd never gotten to know the first time around), but he had the same build he remembered – small and compact and deceptively strong.

"How are the upgrades?" he asked.

A faint smile appeared on Coulson's face. "Unbelievable."

"Then no, thanks. I get enough of fighting enhanced beings with Cap and Thor. I'll stick to Natasha and Stark."

"Has anyone gotten Banner in the ring yet?" He looked genuinely interested.

"Just Thor. He won't fight anyone else. Not yet."

"Natasha's working on him?" Coulson guessed, and Clint nodded. "Good."

The silence hovered between them for long enough that Coulson started inspecting the bandages on his knuckles, and Clint finally broke it with, "Look." Coulson's eyes darted up to him. "Cap pretty much ordered me to give this another shot, so I'm going to try something a little different here. Here's how it's going to go. You're a new guy on the team. You're not some old returning buddy of ours, okay? You're just someone new who was assigned to be our handler, and happens to have the same name as the last guy with the job." He made himself look at the carefully hopeful expression that earned him. "Does that sound like something you can work with?"

"There's very little I can't work with," he replied with Coulson's wry smile, looking at Clint significantly. 

"Don't do that."

"Don't make jokes?" 

"Don't make it seem like I'm in on them." He watched the smile dissolve from Coulson's face, and amended, "Not yet."

Coulson nodded carefully. "This is going to take time." He looked at Clint seriously. "We've been through this once before. I'm willing to do it again."

Clint opened his mouth to object, to point out that he wasn't the man he'd been when Fury had dumped his file on Coulson's desk with nothing more than a _you deal with this_. But he closed it again and just nodded, because in the end, it was the same game. Their positions had just shifted around the board a bit in the meantime.  
______________

Clint had never been good at building partnerships. There had been Fury, in the beginning, which was less a partnership than a contract, and then Coulson, and Natasha, and eventually the rest of the Avengers, to varying degrees, but he had thought he was done with that bullshit for a while, once the dust settled with them. But here he was again, making nice with the new guy and trying to make things work.

It was both easier and harder than he expected – mostly harder because it was easier. He caught himself falling into old routines, old habits, and it hurt to have to pause and pull himself back out of them again, distance himself just enough to remind himself that this wasn't Coulson – or, since it clearly was, to some extent, that it was Fury's Coulson instead of his. 

But it worked. Slowly, haltingly, with a few fights and a lot more moments of awkwardness, he started to count the new Coulson as someone he at least didn't mind hanging out around. They got into the habit of working in each other's space, Coulson bringing his catchup work to Clint's floor, or Clint setting up in the corner of Coulson's couch with his tablet perched on his knees, sketching out plans to run over with Steve or Tony. They were good at being quiet together, and it slowly developed into a new kind of comfortable.

Clint found himself watching Coulson more than he meant to, his attention caught by the faint smile that would ghost over his face as he completed something to his satisfaction, the way his eyelashes drooped towards the end of the night and his limbs slowly melted into the sofa, heavy and at ease.

"Do you sleep?" Clint asked him abruptly one night as Coulson's feet inched closer to his across the couch, and Coulson blinked up at him.

"Yes. And no, before you ask, I don't dream about electric sheep."

"I wasn't going to ask." Clint eyed him. "Do you dream, though?"

Coulson looked thoughtful. "Not really, no." He considered it. "I think I program, actually." He brightened a little. "I never knew much about computers, before. That was more Natasha's area than mine. But while I was at HQ for all those months, Jarvis – I think he snuck in. I'd been under the impression that Nick installed him, but I mentioned it a while back, and – " he shook his head, cutting himself off. "Anyway, I've been learning things." He looked up at Clint, enthused. "I can still learn. Faster than I could before, I think." He paused, his expression softening slightly. "That's the first time you asked me anything about – "

"The elephant in the room?" Clint supplied.

"One of them," Coulson agreed, and Clint didn't quite flinch. "I'm an android," Coulson continued with a helpless little shrug.

Clint couldn't help laughing a little at the absurdity of it. "You are, yeah. Is it…weird? Being – ?" 

"Synthetic?" Coulson filled in. "Not really, no. It's the little things that stick out, honestly. Like picking up a cookie to eat it. Realizing that I've been running for hours and show no signs of fatigue." He held up his hands, holding them up to show Clint his fingers. "My calluses are gone." He looked down at himself, considering. "Honestly, it's stranger to me that I'm young. Everyone I knew at this age…" he trailed off.

"Dead?" Clint guessed.

Coulson shook his head. "Think that I am." He paused. "Was. A long time ago. That's how Fury got his first batch of recruits." He looked up at Clint. "Did I ever tell you that?"

Clint shook his head. "I suspected."

"Last year wasn't the first time Nick Fury has killed me off."

"Does it ever get easier?"

"No." Clint expected more of an answer, but that was all Coulson gave him, looking up to meet his eyes and holding them. "Anything else you're wondering?"

Clint let his eyes drop to Phil's hands, his sleeves shoved up around his elbows. "Does it feel…" he couldn't think of a way to end the question that wasn't _real_. He knelt forward on the couch, holding out his fingers, making his intention clear, then hesitated just far enough away to let Coulson pull back if he wanted. Instead, Coulson rolled his arm over, wrist up, fingers falling slack against his lap, an offering. There was a level of trust in the gesture that Clint hadn't earned yet, and it made something in him twist up into a tight knot. He reached out anyway, and settled his hand against the underside of Coulson's arm.

It was warm, the skin there soft and delicate-feeling, and when Clint let his fingers brush over it, Coulson's breath caught audibly. Clint looked up at him.

"Do you feel that?"

"Of course." Coulson might have sounded offended if he wasn’t so busy being breathless from nothing but the touch of Clint's fingers against his arm.

Clint carefully watched his fingers move so he didn't have to look up at Coulson, because if he did, he was going to ask him what else he could feel, and he didn't think he quite wanted to know the answer just yet. He was trailing his fingers up towards Coulson's palm when a thought occurred to him and he blinked, startled, then did look up to meet Coulson's eyes. "You're breathing."

Coulson's eyes crinkled up. "And they call you Hawkeye."

"How long have you been doing that?" Clint demanded.

"Oh, forty-some-odd years, now." At Clint's unamused look, he just smiled more. 

"Coulson." Clint peered at his chest, watching it move rhythmically. "You're _breathing_." 

"I utilize oxygen," Coulson said with a shrug. "Same as you. Not with the same mechanisms, granted, but…" he held his hands out. "I breathe, more or less. I'm not entirely manufactured. Or, I am, I suppose, but of some biosynthetic components."

"You make it sound like they assembled you out of spare parts in the basement."

A complicated expression appeared briefly on Coulson's face before smoothing away again. "Just call me Fury's monster."

Clint's hand lifted from Coulson's arm towards his face for just a second, and he had to catch the concerned _Phil_ before it slipped out. He pulled his hand back abruptly. "I'm gonna go."

He was probably imagining Coulson deflating a little into the couch. "Yeah," he agreed, and when Clint stood up, he looked small and tired, curled against the cushions. He gave Clint a thin smile, though, and when Clint was almost to the door, he called after him, "Barton." Clint half turned. "Thanks. For asking."

Clint didn't have an answer to that, so he let himself out, went to the shooting range with a bottle of whiskey, and shot until he couldn't feel his fingers.  
______________

"Coffee?" Clint offered absentmindedly one morning, shuffling into the kitchen to find Coulson at the table reading Steve's discarded paper, and it took a long pause from Coulson to make the pieces click together.

"I don't – " Coulson began, and Clint cut him off abruptly.

"No, of course you don't."

"Thank you, though." He could feel Coulson looking up at him, and didn't turn to meet his eyes. "It's fine, Barton."

"No," Clint said tightly. "It's not." He'd started forgetting. For seconds at a time, but more than once, more than twice, more than a dozen times now, there had been moments when he'd forgotten that Coulson was dead, that this replica sitting at the table was nothing but that – a copy, an afterimage. And if he'd started forgetting for that long – 

Coulson picked up the thread of his thoughts effortlessly. "What are you afraid of?" He folded his paper down and looked intently at Clint over it. "That if you forget long enough to offer me coffee, you'll – what? Forget long enough to smile at me, maybe? Or to want to see me naked?" Clint winced. "I think we've already passed that point, honestly." Coulson eyed him, and a tiny smile crept into his eyes when Clint didn't deny it. "What is it really, then? Afraid you'll start liking me?"

"I don't dislike you," Clint said stiffly.

"No," Coulson agreed. "I don't think you do." He held Clint's eyes. "Afraid you'll start trusting me?"

"I forgot you died, Coulson. That doesn't piss you off?"

Coulson shrugged. "It pisses me off more that I died in the first place."

"I forget that, even for a second, and that second could mean the difference between – "

"Between what? You taking a call that I make at face value and pausing to question it, maybe? I can't really see that as a bad thing, I have to say."

"You may not have noticed," Clint pointed out, "but I have a pretty impeccable track record of people returning from the dead as my worst nightmare."

Coulson was quiet for a long moment at that. "I noticed," he said finally, and his voice was so low and quiet, so much a reminder of everything he wasn't anymore that Clint had to turn away. "Barton. I know that."

"Then lay off." Clint scooped up his mug and left the kitchen, hearing the rustle behind him as Coulson lifted his paper up and started to read again.  
_______________

"Two out of three?" Clint asked, leaning into the ropes as he watched Coulson move around the ring, taking shots at an invisible opponent.

"What happened to sticking to non-enhanced humans?"

Clint feigned a yawn. "Bored." 

Coulson stopped moving and looked at him skeptically. "With Natasha?"

"No, now. Natasha's in London, Cap's in DC, Stark's in Tokyo, Thor's in Asgard, and Banner won't fight me." He waved towards the training bots in the corner. "I went a few rounds with Jarvis this morning, but your left hook is sneakier than his." Clint bounced on his feet. "What do you say, boss?" It came out without him meaning for it to, and part of him wanted to reach out and reel it back in, but the genuine pleasure that spread across Coulson's face kept him from backtracking. Instead, he ducked into the ring and held up his fists. "Think you can take me, RoboCop?"

"You've got, what…fifteen years on me right now? Not to mention that I'm operating on a 2.0 system? I think I can take you, yeah."

Coulson didn't go easy on him. Clint had been watching, off and on, keeping an eye on what enhancements had come with Coulson's upgrade. (He wasn't sure when he started thinking of it as one, but it was the word Coulson used, and Clint had adopted it as easier than any of the alternatives.) He got his ass routinely kicked by Thor, like everyone else, and got pretty neatly beaten by Steve most of the time, but Stark had stopped fighting with him because he kept losing. He and Natasha had been almost evenly matched beforehand, with her having a slight advantage, and they still were, except now the advantage was his.

Clint let himself fall back into the easy rhythm of circling a ring with Coulson. It was something they hadn't done often in recent years, even before Coulson's death, but was a holdover from the early days, the rough days, when nothing Coulson said was getting through to Clint, and nothing Clint did made the slightest bit of difference, and they'd end up in the gym, fighting it out until they were both too sore and tired to argue anymore. Clint remembered asking Coulson from flat on his back one night who had taught a stuffy bureaucrat to kick ass like that. _Fury_ had been the answer, and had explained everything Clint needed to know.

They fought well together. Coulson won the first round, but Clint didn't make it easy for him. Clint took the second by fighting dirty, and instead of a third round, they had an actual fight about what constituted rules in a friendly spar, which ended with Clint pinning Coulson to the mat, panting hard and leaning over him and just waiting for the moment when the super strength kicked in and Coulson sent him flying back into the ropes.

Instead, Coulson looked vaguely stunned, and when he twisted his wrists in Clint's grasp and shifted his hips under him, Clint suddenly felt why. 

"Jesus," he hissed, feeling Coulson pressing hard against his leg, and he wasn't sure what the practical purpose was of programming a robot to blush, but Coulson's neck went faintly pink.

"You never asked," he said, actually looking embarrassed.

Clint half wanted to pull away, to tear himself off Coulson and hide on his floor for the foreseeable future, but Coulson was warm and still under him, his breath ragged and uneven, and there was a part of Clint that wanted nothing more than to take him just like this, to drive down against him and wrap his hand around their cocks and get them both off like that, rubbing off against each other on the floor like a couple of people who hadn't been able to get their hands on each other in over a year.

A year – longer, even – since he'd been able to wrap his hands around Coulson's hips and hold him still while he teased him endlessly with his mouth, since he'd felt Coulson pressing against his back, fucking him into the mattress, since they'd fallen asleep with their backs pressed together, one with his face to the window, the other to the door.

" _Fuck_ ," Clint forced out, and let his head drop down to the curve of Coulson's neck, pressing his forehead there and trying to get his breath to even out.

"Clint," Coulson said quietly.

"No," Clint said, his voice muffled, "just…give me a minute." He stayed there for another few moments, then finally gathered every ounce of will he had and pulled away, letting Coulson's wrists go, backing up until he was kneeling on the mat instead of over Coulson's lap. "I'm not doing this."

"Okay," Coulson said easily.

"Okay?" Clint repeated. "Just…okay?"

Coulson shrugged. "Okay, I’m going to go jerk off now?" he offered.

Clint felt his mouth go dry. "You…"

A smile twisted his lips that Clint hadn't seen since before the upgrade. "I do, yeah. And before you make any sexbot cracks, I don't do it because I'm programmed that way. I do it because I have – well, not nerve endings, I guess, but I have sensors that feel things pretty much like your nerves do, and I _want_ to." He knelt up, closer to Clint. "I am capable of wanting things, Barton," he said. He stood and stretched, his pants tenting obscenely right near eye level, and then he was ducking out of the ring, heading for the locker room. "You owe me a third match," he called before the door closed behind him.

Clint made it to his room before he got a hand in his pants, but only because he knew that Tony had at least a couple of cameras in the elevator. He didn't quite make it to the bed, though, getting the door closed behind him and then sliding to his knees right there, shoving a hand into his boxers and wrapping them around himself as he imagined going to his knees for Coulson, taking him in his mouth, finding out exactly what those sensors were wired to do, exactly how desperate he could make him before he got him off, his fingers tight in Clint's hair, hips jerking forward. He braced himself on the door as he came, fucking into his hand and swearing under his breath, and not thirty seconds later the alert sounded, with Jarvis's voice politely informing him that all available personnel were to gather in the conference room on level seventy-two for a briefing from Fury about an emerging threat.

He let his head hit the door with a thunk, and stayed there until the second alert sounded.  
______________

Coulson went into the field with Clint and Banner, and he didn't die.

It shouldn't have been momentous, but it was.  
______________

"Hi." Coulson looked tired enough that Clint almost felt bad disturbing him, but when he stepped back and held the door open, Clint stepped inside anyway, shifting the heavy box in his arms.

"You didn't die," he informed Coulson.

"I know. Neither did you. Congratulations." Coulson leaned in to peer at the box, then pulled back, smiling faintly. "You brought me a present? And you've been having some celebratory drinks?" he guessed.

"Bruce makes – " Clint waved a hand. "Something blue. We'd have invited you, but – " 

"But," Coulson agreed. Clint set the box down and let himself flop down onto the couch, and Coulson followed, kneeling next to him. "To what do I owe the visit?"

"What do you want?"

Coulson blinked. "You're the one who showed up at my door," he reminded him.

"No, before," Clint clarified. "In the gym, you said – "

"I said I can want things," Coulson finished. Clint nodded mutely. Coulson was quiet for a long while, shifting against the sofa. Finally, he said, "I want to know what you need from me."

"I don't know," Clint admitted.

"I don't think it's that you need to hear that I remember Sao Paulo, and Amsterdam, and that roadside motel somewhere in Colorado with the flickering lighting and the sink that didn't work. Because I do, and you know that I do."

"No," Clint agreed. He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up on end. "I don't need to know you remember – I already know that. Your memory files are up to date, I get it. I need to know – " he didn't know how to say _that it means anything_ without using the words, so he didn't. He just waved a hand at Coulson and fell silent.

"That I'm not a robot." There wasn't a hint of a joke in his voice.

"That you're not a robot," Clint agreed.

"I am."

"I know."

"I'm also still me."

"I…" Clint couldn't quite say _I know_ to that. "I'm working on that one." He let himself look at Coulson, curled up on the sofa in his pajamas, looking young and hopeful and so familiar that it hurt. "I'm about 87% sure you're not my worst nightmare, if that helps."

"It's something."

"I have a lot of worst nightmares, boss." 

Coulson nodded. "I know that. And I'm going to put in the time to prove I'm not any one of them." 

"You've done it before."

"I have. I've got practice now. I bet you I can cut my time by half."

"Two years, huh? You're already a few months down."

"And I'm at 87%. I think we're going to be just fine, Specialist."

Clint made a tired noise of agreement. He wasn't quite ready to fall asleep there on the end of Coulson's couch yet, but he could rest, just for a minute. His eyes blinked open a few minutes later, and Coulson was sitting quietly, not quite watching him, eyes flickering between the book in his hand and the door. When Clint shifted, he looked up and smiled almost fondly.

"I forgot," Clint said. He reached beside the couch and slid the box forward towards Coulson. "This is yours."

Coulson set his book aside and let his eyes drop to the box. "My things?" he asked carefully, looking at Clint like he expected to be wrong, like he thought Clint would grab the box back once the words were out in the open. 

"Your things," Clint confirmed. "And before you look, the cards were Fury's fault."

"The – " Coulson began, and cut himself off, frowning deeply. "Oh, I am going to kill him." He reached for the box.

"Get in line, man," Clint told him. "Get in line."  
______________

_"It took me four months to trust Clint Barton to have my back, and another three years to make him believe he'd earned it," Phil said aloud to the quiet bedroom._

_Clint pressed his face to the curve of Phil's neck and smiled against his skin. "I know how to wait."_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Not to Say the Things We Mean by Jai (Podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2784728) by [inkjunket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkjunket/pseuds/inkjunket)




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